LORRIE FARRELLY’S 5-STAR REVIEW

Stirring, heartrendingly poignant, and at times even funny, Bob Rector’s play LETTERS FROM THE FRONT is a gripping read. It’s easy to imagine how effectively the stage production would take audiences to the edges of their seats, their emotions on their sleeves.

Much of the action takes place in 1945, as a writer named Katharine, who has lost a husband to war and now has a son fighting in Italy, struggles to form a collection of letters into a stage production that will express patriotism and pride in our Armed Forces, but also show the heartbreaking cost paid by the men and women who so courageously defend our freedom.

The letters span many years and many wars, from the Revolutionary War through the VietNam War. (A portion of the play takes place in 1965.) They have a fierce hold on Katharine’s emotions – and on the reader’s – but less so on those of Katharine’s cynical, make ’em-laugh boyfriend, Johnny, a popular radio comedian. Johnny believes it doesn’t pay to be serious – he got his big break by turning a “Hamlet” soliloquy into a comic routine – but Katharine knows instinctively that his ideas for a loud, gaudy, fireworks-and-Statue-of-Liberty production are not right for her stage play. Still, she doesn’t know how to present the letters effectively to an audience.

Luckily for us, Bob Rector does. And if this very moving piece sends you in search of ways to support and thank our troops and veterans, so much the better!

A Navy brat and graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, LORRIE FARRELLY is proud to be a Fightin’ Banana Slug. Following graduate school at Northwestern University, she began a career in education that included teaching art to 4th graders, drama to 8th graders, and finally, math to high school students.

She’s a three-time winner on “Jeopardy!” She has shepherded wide-eyed foreign exchange students along Hollywood Blvd, and has happily curried and shoveled as a ranch hand at Disneyland’s Circle D Ranch. And always, she writes.

Lorrie has won a Presidential Commendation for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics. She’s been a Renaissance nominee for Teacher of the Year and a finalist for the Orange Rose Award in romantic fiction. Her novels have been awarded Readers’ Favorite 5-Stars. TIMELAPSE and TERMS OF SURRENDER are winning MEDALISTS in the 2014 READERS’ FAVORITE INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS, and TIMELAPSE is also a GOLD MEDALIST in the 2014 AUTHOR’S CAVE BOOK AWARDS and the TIME-TRAVEL NOVEL WINNER in the 2014 CYGNUS AWARDS. Lorrie and her family live in Southern California.